The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1887-07-15

A writer in the Audubon Magazine
says: If plants and trees were simply
to die where they live, they would not
render the soil fertile; what they take
from the air would go back to the air u,
and nothing would 60 back to the soil
except the little they take up by their
roots; just as when wood is burnt, moth
ing goes hack to the earth but the ashes
which came from it Peas and indigo
and tea and coffee are exceptions, they
take nitrogen from the air like animals.
But almost every plant that grows is
eaten by some creature, either in its
green state, or when dry, or while it is
going to decay. In this latter stage it
is eaten by worms and other creatures,
some of them so small that they are
not visible without the aid of micro.
scope.
Buteverything is eaten, and although
in the process of digestion something
goes back to the air again, a large pro-
portion goes to enrich the soil with
plant food, rendering it more fertile A
cow eating ton Of grass or hay, assist.
ed by what it takes from the air, will
make as much manure as will supply
plant food to two or three tons of fresh
grass.
And so it is that when the farmer
finds his crops getting poorer and poor
er every year, and leaves the
land until fallow, the worms and other
creatures in the soil eat all the plant
roots and dead leaves, and create plant
food which provides for crop of weeds;
insects come to eat the weeds and birds
to eat the insects, and in few years
the fertility of the soil is restored in
whole or in part. The worms and mi
mute creatures in the soil convert the
plants into what is called the vegetable
mould, and the birds preying on worms
and insects supply what is necessary to
render the soil fertile for grain crops.
The black soil is really not vegetable
mould because it has all passed through
the worms and soil microbes, as the
minute creatures are called, but until
lately no one knew that.
This then is the secret of the earth's
fertility. Every creature that lives re.
turns more to the soil than it takes from
it; it gives it all back with something
added which it takes from the air-fnal-
ly it gives its own body. Consequently,
Fin a state of nature, the soil always
tends to grow richer from year to year,
from generation to generation.
Perhaps the most wonderful fact in
this connection is that ons of the SUBJ
stances, called carbon, exists in the air
in quantity not sufficient to cover the
whole dry land of the earth with mature
forests at one time. The plants and
animals of one generation must die to
set free the carbon needed for the next
generation, so that the carbon, which
constitutes more than fourth of the
bodies Of living plants and animals, is
the very self.same carbon which entered
into the substance Of the plants and
animals of the pre.adamite ages, and of
every generation that has lived since.
Nature is very lavish of all the other
substances derived from the air. The
rains aud rivers of this country wash
away about four inches of its surface ev.
cry century, and thus great part of the
plant food, which plants and animals
take from the air, is carried to the ocean,
nscessitating the constant aud universal
activity of life and death to replace itby
fresh drafts from the air; but nature is
very economical Of her carbon-animals
give it back to the air with every breath,
and plants as constantly take it in by
their leaves.
But there is one substance necessary to
men and animals, that is the phosphorus
which entered into the formation of their
bones and brain, which does not exist in
the air, nor originally in the rocks. For
this necessary substance we are indebted
to the fish, which abstracted it from the
waters of the ocean, used it to form their
own bones, rendered it insoluble in wa
ter and left it at the bottom of the ocean,
so that when the continents were up.
heaved, the ocean mud was of it; plants
take it from the soil and men and ami
mails get the necessary supply in their
food and thus it is that man, the high
est branch of the tree of life, has inher-
tied the substance of his body, not only
from all the past generations of life on
earth, but he has also inherited some
of his substance from the fishes which
lived and died in the ocean which once
flowed over this continent and from the
great creatures which lived on the dry
land-the giant saurians of bygone
age. These giant reptiles, some of them
fifty or sixty feet long, which swan in
the water, padded in the mud and
roamad ovar tha drv lond ond soroo &c